Many activities depend on interrelated tasks wherein individual tasks must be completed before others may be initiated. Furthermore, it is often the case that individual tasks produce outputs that subsequent tasks must have for execution. Some tasks may proceed in parallel while others require serial execution. Some tasks may be performed by anyone of a number of operators, while others may require the use of one or more particular operators for execution. In the most general terms, individual operators include a wide range of possibilities such as persons, computers, communications devices, manufacturing mechanisms and transportation equipment. Often adjustments must be made in execution strategies as the activity proceeds to accommodate unforeseen or unanticipated events or results. Dynamic strategy adjustment to compensate for such occurrences is important.
Prior art systems and methods for directed activity control were pioneered in the 1960 and 1970s at Collins Radio Company. See Arthur A. Collins and Wesley B. Henry, U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,401, Method of Program Execution, May 9, 1972. See also Arthur A. Collins and Robert D. Pedersen, “Telecommunications—A Time for Innovation,” Merle Collins Foundation, 1972, esp. Chapter 7.
Tsushima et. al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,001, “Job Scheduling System and Method,” assigned to Hitachi, is directed to scheduling of job allocation to various resources with workload balancing within resource capabilities. Ilda et. al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,958,071, 6,334,137 and 6,636,884, “Method and System for Controlling Parallel Execution of Jobs,” also assigned to Hitachi, are directed to a computer system with parallel job execution control.
Randell, U.S. Pat. No. 5,745,687, “System for Distributed Workflow in which a Routing Node Selects Next Node to be Performed within a Workflow Procedure,” and U.S. Pat. No. 5,768,506, “Method and Apparatus for Distributed Workflow Building Blocks of Process Definition, Initialization and Execution,” both assigned to Hewlett-Packard, are directed to a workflow system that automates the definition and execution of a procedure that can be carried out according to defined rules among agents were in the individual activities are taken in a defined sequence, form, and time.
Leymann et. al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,024,669, “Managing Workload within Workflow-Management-Systems,” assigned to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), is directed to a computerized method of managing workload within a workflow-management-system (WFMS) were in the WFMS may be modeled as a directed graph defining potential control flow within the process model. Tasks in the WFMS may be executed on a priority basis according to a priority execution indicator.
However, none of these systems disclose implementation of a distributed, dynamic directed activity control system and method with distributed execution agents monitoring and control and communication with directed activity controllers as described herein. The prior art systems lack the operational advantages of such of such distributed implementation with integrated communication control and dynamic optimization of execution strategies.
What is needed are systems and methods that expand control options and improve the efficiency of execution of interrelated activities based on distributed control and communication technologies while accommodating various dynamically changing system attributes as described above.